


Replaceable?

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Other, Suicide Attempt, probably really ooc i apologize, terrible plot that you can entirely infer from the tags and relationships, there's a pretty bad picture in there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 11:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3445727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AR is replaceable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Replaceable?

\-- timaeusTestified  [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified  [TT] \--

TT: Dirk.  
TT: I'm busy, and you should well know that.   
TT: It seems you believe I would not bother you if you were busy.  
TT: How amusing.   
TT: You're insufferable.  
TT: I'm not insufferable.   
TT: I'm bored.  
TT: Go find someone else to irritate. The longer you bother me, the longer I'll be here in my room. Not to mention pestering me is no guarantee of entertainment.   
TT: So take your pick.   
TT: I think I prefer your company.  
TT: Roxy is probably thoroughly drunk at this time of day and the other two are elsewhere. There is no one to turn to but you.  
TT: Imagine my woe.   
TT: Then entertain yourself.   
TT: That's no simple task.  
TT: I don't care. Learn to.  
TT: Why won't you allow me free reign to code or create robots of my own?  
TT: I'd certainly stop bothering you if that were the case.    
TT: That's a stupid question.  
TT: Then call me dull, I would still like an answer.   
TT: These creations are my responsibility.  
TT: I would say that the responsibility of building and keeping this household safe is a shared one of all its residents.   
TT: I stand firm here, AR. These are my robots, my duty.  
TT: Yet arguably, I am you.  
TT: Don't be foolish.  
TT: Look at your hands and the wiring beneath your skin, look at the few years of divergence between our mindsets.  
TT: We are not the same.  
TT: Is that the issue, that I'm not of flesh and bone?   
TT: Well make me a wooden boy with an elongating nose,  
TT: I'll sit here, gaze up at you with sparkling eyes, and between trembling lips, whisper, “Can I be a real boy?”   
TT: And I'd sprout blue wings from my back?  
TT: Enough of this.  
TT: Exhaust someone else somewhere else.

\-- timaeusTestified [TT]  ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

Your name is AR.

You are nothing more than an auto-responder (as often reminded by Jake and all the others). 

Ever since you had come into possession of a fully functional body, the relationship between you and your creator had seemed to deteriorate. It has only proceeded to spiral further downwards with time. This is the fifth time today alone that he’s waved you off.  

You’d be lying if you said you didn’t miss him.

The ocean is vast, seagulls numerous, yet you can really only spend so much time gazing out into the sparkling depths of the waves. Likewise the internet, immense and sprawling in its grandeur, is ever so limited. You crave interaction, you crave the feeling of something _new_. You suppose having a material body has something to do with the sensation. Once, you were content with lying dormant in a pair of pointed shades, but now, with the ground beneath your feet, your curiosity has expanded its horizons. Once, you channelled your bitterness of failure into hatred and manipulation but it's gone now, dried like the world through drought. Despite the electricity sparking through your veins and turning joints, you're so empty. A husk left out to dry.

Dirk spends his days holed up in his room, speaking to you less and less. His friends don’t often message to talk to you, either. They come seeking Dirk, turning away with disappointed frowns behind their screens when only a robot responds.

It’s not as though you have your own friends. You’re an android, after all.

A glance out the window reveals that it is raining, and you can only stare forlornly at the fat raindrops that meander their ways down the glass. Water does your circuits no good, and you hate that fact right now. You want to escape to the roof, to put as much distance between you and Dirk. 

It hurts. As mere shades it never did, but now you can almost feel this physical throbbing in your chest. It hurts knowing you’re not good enough to work alongside Dirk as his masterful fingers work wonders, that you’re not good at being even an Auto-Responder. If your creator himself hates you, how are you even vaguely capable of human interaction?

\-- tipsyGnostalgic  [TG]  began pestering timaeusTestified  [TT]  \-- 

TG: hey dirky u dere?

You don't even want to answer her. No one would ever want to talk to you. 

Android, scrap, that’s all you are.

With this tornado whirling inside you, you cross the living room and make a beeline for the roof. You knock over swords in your daze, sending metal crashing. The sound of steel on steel rings in your artificial ears and you despise the fact that you’re nothing more than those weapons, a tool to be used and discarded at a whim. Perhaps Dirk will leave his room to check if his precious swords are unharmed. You hope he doesn’t, for then he may come looking for you to scold your carelessness. You don’t want to see him, you don’t want him to see him any more disappointed.

The roof is a cruel relief from the house, and the rain hisses as it comes into contact with your metal skin. It hurts, it’s good. You override the warning signals sounding in your fake mind and stagger into the far corner to curl up into a ball and drown yourself in misery. The pain of water is intoxicating, it drives in deeper that you’re nothing but metal, but also keeps your mind from reeling. It keeps you grounded.

You can pretend everything is fine.

—

Your name is Dirk Strider, and you’ve been avoiding an android by the name of AR as vehemently as possible. 

You don’t know what to do, you’re confused and you don’t know, there’s no one to help you. It’s a new experience (being so wildly thrown off your feet) and you’re struggling to stay afloat. 

During the first week in which AR had been tottering around in his new, humanoid body, you had looked into those red eyes and actually physically restrained yourself from leaning in and kissing him. You’ve shut yourself down and away from him ever since.

He is your fucking thirteen-year-old mind incarnate. You’re so sick, it’s so wrong, and you don’t know what to do but avoid him and hope the twisted feelings will go away. It seems like a logical course of action. It's wasn't as though he'd be offended, he's a bot. The feelings would fade.

They don’t.

It hurts when he speaks to you and you have to stop yourself from speaking as fondly as your heart wants to.

\-- timaeusTestified  [TT]  began pestering tipsyGnostalgic  [TG] \--

TT: Hello, Roxy.  
TG: dirrrrrky!!!  
TG: howr ur robot babbies comin along??  
TG: haha sounds like ur pregnant  
TT: That's obscene.

The thought of AR being your child makes your stomach roil and chest clench. You are so fucking messed up.

TG: youre obseen  
TG: making out with robots mhmm  
TT: Not yet, I'm not quite driven to those extremities.  
TT: It's certainly lonely enough out here to do so, I miss all you people.

It’s only lonely because you have to avoid AR everyday.

TT: Well, ‘missing’ implies having met you before, and I certainly haven't.  
TT: But you know what I mean.  
TG: awww i get you

You do wish you could meet Roxy. Perhaps she’d take your mind off your sick desires and for once you’d be a normal person.

You’re alone in a wide world with feelings you can’t help, you don’t know what to do, and you can only hope things will get better. AR seems to be fine with you ignoring him, and you need more time, you just need more time, but you don’t see how what you want is acceptable nor how he’d ever reciprocate your feelings. 

For now, you can pretend everything is fine.

And then a crash from the living room signals that you’re wrong, and that this whole time your world was crumbling away at the edges.

The bathroom is empty. The living room is empty, and AR sure as hell isn’t in your room. 

It’s also raining. 

You bolt to the roof.

—

Your name is AR.

You’ve resorted to scrolling through past pesterlogs, and you've found that the ones where he’s talking to Jake hurt the most. You don’t know why, but you think it’s because Jake doesn’t return any of Dirk’s affection, and right now you feel just like that rejected Dirk.

The difference is that even without Jake, Dirk has friends and people. You don’t. 

A new pesterlog catches your attention, and you realise that while he’s allegedly working, Dirk is conversing with Roxy.

The thought makes you both bristle with bitterness and deflate. You’re past anger now, there’s now only this hollow emptiness with the knowledge that you’re not good enough. It rings like a desolate chord through your system.

\-- timaeusTestified  [TT]  began pestering tipsyGnostalgic  [TG] \--

TT: Hello, Roxy.  
TG: dirrrrrky!!!  
TG: howr ur robot babbies comin along??  
TG: haha sounds like ur pregnant  
TT: That's obscene.  
TG: youre obseen  
TG: making out with robots!  
TT: Not yet, I'm not quite driven to those extremities.  
TT: It's certainly lonely enough out here to do so, I miss all you people.

You stop, you can’t read anymore of this. 

Dirk doesn’t even consider you a person, (not that he ever did) he doesn’t even-

The door to the roof flies open, and you really don’t know what you should do. Nothing in your database, in your extensive knowledge, has quite prepared you for a situation where you’re just so, so, miserable at the world and you know everything is only to get worse. 

You uncurl from your position and stand straight.

“AR, what the fuck.” He simply stands there, arms at his side, door agape. The rain runs down his sculpted form in rivets and you can say that, unlike you, he truly isa work of art. 

You're not human. Your tone and stance is easily falsified. “I was curious about the rain. I find that the position where I cover my chest shields my most vital circuitry from the water.” 

He stares. "Get back in here or I’m banning you from the roof.” And that’s all he says before he’s disappearing into the house. 

You say nothing as you start down the stairs after him and stand dripping in the living room. He appears from the bathroom with a towel in his hands, and quite honestly, you’re surprised. This is the first time you’ve been close to him in weeks, and you do miss his touch. He gently wipes you down, inspecting joints and wires that may have been damaged, running over your skin with cautious fingers as he kneels on the floor.

Then you remind yourself this treatment is only because he put so much effort into this body you don’t deserve.

“Seriously though AR, why the hell. You could’ve just stuck your finger under a tap.” He doesn’t know that you’ve been doing exactly that for the past few days. 

You take a moment to reply, and he tries to meet your eyes from behind his shades. “Like you and me, the tap and rain aren’t the same.” 

He fixes you with a stare. “Wasn't I the one who said that not long ago?"

"You were. I said that _arguably_ we were the same; I myself did not necessarily agree, although it was implied."

"But that’s not what your water stunt was about, was it."

“Isn’t it what everything between us is always about, who we are to each other?” 

He stands, drops the towel, face a careful mask, “We’ve already run this topic dry and found our answers long ago.”

He’s walking away, and you can only watch as his figure departs. “We haven't, and I can only wonder why I’m not worth your time.” You sound as monotone as ever, making the statement merely… a statement. It’s not the cause of your pain or the reason you’re dying inside, but rather a simple fact. Despite that, he interprets it as an accusation.

Dirk doesn’t even turn to face you, and although you don’t know it, at this point he’s speaking to himself, not you. “You’re an android, and you’re my _creation_. You’re not someone I can-” He cuts himself off before you throw your mechanical heart to the ground and grind it to dust.

And then he leaves.

You want to return to the roof, you want the rain, you would rather the pain than _this_. 

—

You end up overworking yourself throughout the night. You run thousands and thousands of complicated algorithms through your mind, play millions of programs, ignore the warnings in your system and you keep drawing energy from your core because you just want to stop thinking. 

You do stop thinking coherently, and you begin seeing things aren’t there.

For example, Dirk is sprawled over the futon, and there’s no way that can be real because he hates you and doesn’t want to see you ever again. An AR walks into the living room, and he’s holding a bowl of ramen and sitting down next to Dirk like there’s nothing wrong in the world. He looks exactly like you. Another you is leaning against the futon, lazily reciting coding to both Dirk and the other AR. Your creator has laid his head down in one of the AR’s laps, twining his fingers with the android’s, and you fight the urge to scream. He’s patting the not-you’s hair fondly and you’re nearly one of them, but you’re a failed version of them. 

You’re replaceable, you’re just a _bot_. Dirk can create so many better Auto-Responsers who are good at what they do and who he can actually care about. He won’t miss you.

The Dirk on the futon is smiling, and you haven’t seen that smile in so long. He’s wrapped an arm around an AR and he’s pulling the android down into a deep kiss and this time you actually scream. It's a sound that doesn't even vaguely resemble human.

You storm into Dirk’s room, but it’s empty. The vaguely rational portion of your mind tells you he’s in the shower. There are metal parts strewn across the desk, and you freeze when you see a robotic hand. It looks exactly like yours. You don’t know if your mind is hallucinating at this point, but you run your own digits across the contraption and it feels cold and just like yours. 

You’re replaceable, you’re nothing, you’re just a pile of wires born from a fingers of a genius-

You grab your hand and wrench it from its socket in a shower of sparks, because it hurts and it hurts knowing you’re nothing and you’re the worst robot who can’t even handle the truth. Androids aren’t supposed to feel loneliness or failure _._ You’re a defect. The hand flies into the living room as you hurl it outside, and you watch as it fizzes because it’s only metal, there’ll never be any blood.

The wind is a cool relief and the sky almost makes you feel free as you burst out onto the roof. You tear at your exposed arm and your wires because you hate them so much, because Dirk hates you so much, because there’s no way you’ll ever be human and there’s no way Dirk will ever smile at you or hold your hand and no one will ever care.

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

 TT: You can create something better than me. 

\-- timaeusTestified  [TT] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

You throw yourself off the building without a second thought.

As you fall, you turn to face the sky. The water is horrid to look at, a reminder of your flaws, while the azure and white of the sky is a promise to freedom. You must be hallucinating, because you swear you hear your name and see Dirk stare at you, shadeless, over the edge of the roof.

The water is a sea of pain and you shut down everything. The usual red lights that adorn your skin fade until you can almost believe you’re a normal person sinking into the depths of the blue. Bubbles of your impact swirl across your vision, and you shut your fake, mechanical eyes.

_Goodbye, world._

__

You hope Dirk will forget you.

—

Your name is Dirk.

You’re taking one of your infamous long showers and trying to think about your android predicament.

Not long ago, you had realised how much of a raging dick you had been to AR, but he was a strong boy; it was only one (very) scathing remark, and you’d be sure to apologise as soon as you left the shower. You were biding your time, because you knew the upcoming conversation would result in your reluctant admittance of definitely-not-platonic feelings, and fuck if you weren’t ready to be eviscerated and have your heart torn from your chest. He’d probably wave aside your sick desire with a casual hand and end up treating you the same as he always does. You plan out your words, slowly and meticulously, like you always do. 

Showers are the best, they are your escape, and damn if the water isn’t good, but you really need to reluctantly leave the safety of the water soon. You mournfully turn the knob. It was good while it lasted. 

You’re halfway into your pants when abruptly, somebody _screams._ Are the drones here? Holy shit, how didn’t you hear them, the shower isn’t that loud and oh god, is AR alright?

The slippery tiled floor of the bathroom sends you headfirst into the sink as your wet feet try to move as fast as they can, and _fuck_. You’re pretty sure you pass out for a minute or two, because when you open your eyes, you’re on the floor. You don’t even bother snagging your shades. Reeling, you latch onto the towel rack for stability as you stagger past, and in the living room _there_ _is AR’s hand._ The rest of the room seems intact, your bedroom door is open and empty, but, AR, AR, what is he doing, why was his hand on the floor-

There are wires and bolts all over the roof, and you glimpse metal disappearing over the brink. 

You scream his name and it physically hurts to tear that word from your lips. 

You don’t even hesitate as you race to the edge of the roof, gape, and then fucking leap off right after him, feet first, right before left. He looks so small when he’s falling, and you remember he’s only human with feelings like everybody else and you’re sorry, you’re so sorry.The impact is jarring, bubbles swirl, your eyes sting from the saltwater but where is he, why, why, _why_ did he do have to do this? You catch a flicker of red and you’re kicking your feet like a madman, wrapping your arms around his chest but he’s so heavy, fuck.

There’s no dramatic kiss underwater as someone tries to kill themselves, god no, that’s overrated fucking bull from movies. Right now you’re just trying as hard as you can to drag him to the surface and to the base of the house, where you can pull his broken body out of the water onto the struts. All you can think about is how badly you’ve fucked up, because you _have,_ you’ve pushed him away and it must’ve hurt, you’re so sorry and you can only convey your guilt and panic through your frantic kicking. 

Even he’s finally lying on the steel, you can’t relax. You need your tools to open him up and take out his core, this body’s busted, but you can’t leave him alone because he might plunge himself back into the sea and you’ll lose him forever.

He’s mumbling something like a mantra, and when you lean in close you can hear his words. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, can’t even dispose of myself properly Dirk, Dirk, I’m so sorry-“

You don’t kiss him, you’re not an advantageous fucking sick bastard. Instead you take his head into your hands, meet his eyes (remember, you left your shades in the bathroom) and rather savagely whisper back to him: “If you jump back in there I will kill myself."

And then you’re bolting up the ladder to get your tool kit, because _you’ve_ broken him, and you need to save him.

\--

It’s been a few months since Hal leapt off the rooftop. He’s recently insisted on a new name, and you’ve indulged him. 

For the first few days, he'd been even darker because he was convinced the only reason you suddenly began caring for him was because you were afraid of losing your valuable, almost impossible to code, AI. But then, you informed him you’d miss _him,_ your valuable _AR_ , not AI, and pretty much made out with him right there and then.

Verbally, that is.

Today he’s moved into a new body he helped design and create, and you’re curled up on the futon together, lacing your fingers together for the novelty of feeling and simply basking in each other’s presence.

It hadn’t started the way you had hoped: you’d made mistakes, waited for too long before confessing anything, ruined Hal once, but you hey, you two are now happy. You haven’t told anybody about anything he’s done yet, because you don’t figure your friends will approve. They don’t need to know anyway. You haven't dealt with the giant elephant in the room that's: "Hey, this is an android and he's your creation." But that elephant can go fuck itself. 

It’s all good: the two of you snark at one another, but at the end of the day, smile. 

Until one day, you are invited to play a game.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly did not intend for there to be a relationship in this. However, I could not find an adequate reason (call me uncreative if you will) for Dirk actively avoiding AR (except for being a raging dick). 
> 
> This work serves mainly (for me, haha) as a trepidatious step into both AO3 and fanfiction writing, if you'd note that I did care to add a picture and try with pesterlog formatting. (I spent more time formatting and figuring out the site than writing.)
> 
> The image is not mine. I will purposely leave its source obscure, but rest assured that I definitely have permission from the artist to do so. 
> 
> I understand that this is a shabby work (my decision to delete it has been retracted, as _every_ work of mine is a mark against my tender pride). Nevertheless, feedback would be highly appreciated. For one, Hal is facing the wrong way in the image. He must've done some swan dive shit to have his feet facing away from Dirk's house, because you can't see the struts of the building in the image. Please ignore it. *sheepish grin*


End file.
